Pro vs. Consumer Equipment


One of the best set-ups I ever heard was a Crown preamp feeding a McIntosh amp driving a custom built cabinet featuring JBL professional speakers. I've also read quite a bit about professional cables being a lot less expensive and just as good as consumer cables. Earlier today, D911 posted a thread on the professional ART SL-1 power amp.

Across the board, these professional solutions seem to be very high quality at a much lower price point than the consumer equipment. So what's your experience? How many of you are running professional equipment in your set-ups? What are some great recommendations? Does this work better with some kinds of music than with others? Thanks in advance.
ozfly
As usual, a very well thought out analysis Sean. You might be interested in looking at this thread:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?aamps&1053585689&read&h12&zzlD911&&#rest

A word of warning -- the guy who started it does the mods for the unit. Though he did not fully disclose up front, he seems to mean well and be a true believer.
I'd like to see if this piece lives up to the hype or if it is another case of the "Emporer's new clothes" syndrome. Personally, i thought that the ART Dio DAC was a perfect example of hype. Given the fact that this is a product from the same manufacturer and one of the main instigators of the "internet hype" is a person that could benefit from increased sales of these units ( much like those that "hyped" the DIO and performed mods to it ) really makes me leary of buying one to find out for myself. Sean
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My experience with pro gear is in line with what many have said here vs. consumer home stuff. One major area I tend to find largely "no contest" between the two markets, is that pro equipment tends to stomp all over most consumer high end speaker gear dynamically!...no contest really. Except for the likes of actives and horn loaded ultra high senstivity home audio designs, and even speakers with built in powered woofers and such, pro audio speakers have a dynamic advantage over the average full range home offerings.
One saving grace in a smaller acoustic space of most domestic homes, is crossing over your "audiophile" or "mid-fi speakers" as "small", or using a crossover to a sub somehow, making the system more efficient, even bi-amped.
Basically, running full range, you can set 100 consumer home audio full range speakers next to 100 pro audio full range speakers, and the dynamics and efficiency advantage is going to be decidely on the pro side!...again, no contest. But, at least in a dedicated HT setting, your going to get much needed dynamic help by the use of "crossover" and "bi-amp" applications from sub/sat set-up's, or by at least the assistance of adding a powered sub to the system. Also the smaller acoustic space, as well as close relative proximity to speakers in a home environement is going to help greatly with efficiency, sensitivity needs, as well as dynmic needs of a system! Still, care is needed to try and make up for generally less dynamically able lower sensitivity/efficiency speakers that are the norm from most consumer speaker systems! Again, getting the sub integrated helps, and is deffinitely needed!
I agree Forever. Active multi-amplification and / or much simpler crossover design goes a LONG way in terms of what we hear from a system. That is primarily why i'm a "fan" of active crossover / mulit-amping and / or "true" full range single driver systems. Both get rid of ( or minimize ) the passive crossover networks and increase dynamics and transparency. It would be a "win/win" situation for home use if higher costs and greater complexity were not involved.

As far as Pro speakers go, most have very drastic flaws but do what they are designed to do quite well. Then again, the same goes for most well thought out home speakers. The two situations are VERY different from each other and the products are built to suite those individual needs. Sean
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